“I’ll see Weles soon,” she says with a giggle that’s eerily childlike. “My dear Perun will chain him right back where he belongs, and I’ll have a lot of fun playing with him this time. A girl needs entertainment, and you refuse to give me any. But that’s all right. I’ll play with his balls instead.”
My back crawls as I briefly consider her touching me when I’m helpless to stop her. Oh, but I hate to be right. They didsomethingduring the soul threshing, and I still don’t know what.
“That’s cocky,” I say with scorn. “No one’s seen Weles in ages, and Nawie is impenetrable.”
“I am good at penetrating, though,” she says with a flash of white teeth. “I learned. Did you know there are men who like it when a woman grows a dick and does it to them? Weles liked it.”
I force myself not to lash out. The memory of her being the one to do it makes me want to retch.
“I don’t think you can defeat him,” I say with disdain I don’t truly feel. Her confidence worries me. “But it will be fun to watch you fail. When will it happen?”
“When the time is right, when the sun is bright, when your ass isn’t as tight,” she answers in a sing-song voice, performing a few steps of a folk dance. “Well, I’m bored now. You won’t fuck me, you won’t smile, you won’t even believe in me. Naughty boy. I’m off to see someone nicer.”
She disappears in a flutter of butterfly wings, and the ray of sun shining on the mourners is extinguished, only dark clouds and tears left for them. I watch the pitiful crowd a little longer, scorn and grief stirring in my chest.
Once upon a time, I’d sympathize with their suffering. I’d come out, promise them I was taking good care of their dead in Nawie, and vow revenge on Mokosz. The mortals of yore, not yet spoiled by Perun, would have been comforted and strengthened.
This bunch would run screaming if they saw me, either as Woland or Weles, so I don’t even try.
As I travel through the shadows back to my domain, I think about Mokosz. She hates mortals for different reasons than I do. When they solidified their beliefs, they decided collectively she would be the Mother, patron goddess to midwives and expecting women.
But Mokosz was nevermotherlybefore that. The only child who received any of her affection was Strzybog. Her other children, like the rodzanicas, she ignored or downright scorned. Mokosz likes fucking, seducing, playing with men and sometimes women. Bearing children is her way of fucking with her lovers, making them fight over her, the way Perun and I did.
Playing the benevolent mother makes her itch.
So she rebels. Making the poroniec was a way to corrupt her image. She twisted it into something sinister, a mother who turns the young into beasts. And I’ll bet she enjoyed making this scheme that required killing pregnant women who pester her with their constant prayers.
She’ll probably get some peace now, with fewer women left to pray.
I hate Mokosz, but I also understand her. Entangled in knots she cannot cut through, expectations and beliefs that hold power over her, she’s lost and furious.
But like I told Jaga, all gods are free to act as they please, and while it’s harder to go against the natures mortals imposed on us, it’s not impossible.
Mokosz is a bitch through and through. She never tried to change.
I spend the next week searching for any clues that might tell me what Mokosz did during the threshing. I comb through every level of Nawie with my magic and in person, speaking with souls and bieses who stay here. No one knows anything.
When I go back to my rooms at the end of each frustrating day, Jaga’s unseeing, dark eyes welcome me with disinterest. She stopped eating again, her face gaunt, skin dull. Her hair is knotted and filthy.
I try to understand what happened that day, why she felt almost like herself for a time before she collapsed back into apathy, but there are too many variables. Was it the novelty of seeing the Well of Souls? My blood? Our kisses? Was it the food she finally ate that day? Or something else, something elusive I haven’t noticed?
Jaga is the first creature of this type, a mortal given godlike immortality, and I have no one to compare her to.
I am so desperate, I even invite Chors to speak with her, because he’s the one who coaxed her out back then. He comes in, slim and tired. The new moon is coming, and my son is weak, Dadzbog’s curse taking away his vitality. His lips are chapped and bleed when he stretches them in an uncomfortable smile.
“I’ll take you somewhere nice when I’m strong again,” he promises when she looks at him, apathetic and defeated.
The sight of them breaks my heart. My two loves, both sick. The helplessness I feel every day grows insurmountable, and I have to look away, crushed under its weight.
It feels like nothing will ever be well again.
Chapter eight
Wiosna
“And how are you today, oh, Dark One?”
I look down at Wiosna’s squat form as she sidles up to me during one of my rounds. She chose to appear today as she was in her forties, her figure healthily rounded, back a bit hunched, face ruddy from the sun. Her eyes glint with shrewd intelligence.
